


i will love you as if it’s the only thing that I’ve ever done correctly

by lostinthefire



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Drabble Collection, F/M, Ficlet Collection, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-02-24 07:20:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 2,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2573003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostinthefire/pseuds/lostinthefire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of Clint/Natasha and Natasha-centric ficlets and drabbles in one easy to find location</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I will be updating this at random as I commit more Natasha related words which is something I've been meaning to do for ages now.

She moves her hands against him like a skilled musician playing an instrument. Her fingers scratch words into his skin but they aren't meant for him to commit to. They are fundamental words, things he can fall back on and remember.

She presses a kiss against him, her lips soft and gentle. He's half asleep and mumbles something, pulling her close, and she laughs.\

She loves him like this and he loves her just as much. They are lazy and comfortable and nothing requires them to move. Sure, the world will come calling soon enough but not yet and that is okay.

They have things that need to be dealt with, issues that have risen up but there is nothing between them. Their relationship is solid, it is long-standing and it will survive the test of time. 

Because in the end they are each other's partner. They belong to one another more than anything else and maybe she will fight him or he will walk away an do something dumb but they will return to each other in the end.

It's just what they do.


	2. Chapter 2

When they fight, which isn't often, she tries not to talk. She tries to let him yell and be frustrated and do what he wants but she tries so, so hard to be quiet.

Because she knows when she speaks, her words slice through him. She knows she can wield syllables like weapons and cut to the quick.

She knows that every part of her can be used to hurt someone.

So she lets Clint be annoyed and angry and peeved. She lets him rant and rave at her if he needs to but she stays quiet.

Until she can't.

Until she's had enough and she's spitting words like bullets at him, hitting her mark every time. She's precise and damn good at what she does and in the moment, she has no regrets.

But after, when things have settled and she's watching him lick his wounds, she feels bad. Not even guilty, just...a little annoyed with herself.

She doesn't want to hurt him, doesn't want to use words like venom on an open wound. It's just....if they get to the point of fighting, actually fighting and not bickering like children, she's going to go for the jugular, it's in her nature.

But she tries, she tries so hard to be good, to not attack and let him get out his anger instead and mos of the time she's successful. It's just every now and then she falters.

Every now and then, someone has to bleed.


	3. Chapter 3

The door shuts behind her and Natasha relaxes immediately. Her shoulders slump and she rests against the wall , taking a deep breath.

Clint watches her and she knows he's worried but she doesn't say anything yet. She's tired and she can't entirely be bothered to comfort him just yet.

He walks over to her, putting his hands against her sides and tilting his head. "You okay?"

She just nods, offering a slight smile. "Yeah, I'm good."

He presses a kiss to her temple. "Okay."

Moving forward, she wraps her arms around him, pulling him close to her. "It's been a hell of a day," she says quietly.

"Yeah," he agrees, putting hims arms around her. "Yeah it really has."

She sighs, relaxing a little more. "At least it's done."

"Yeah."

They don't say anything after that, just hold each other in the stillness of the farm, keeping each other close and offering silent comfort that the other clearly needs.


	4. Chapter 4

She worships who she is now, not in a conceded way, not in a selfish way but in in the way that a creature who had not been given freedom worships the open sky.

She looks in the mirror and smiles. She touches herself, gets to know her body, reminds herself that yes, this is her own to do with what she will.

She loves herself fiercely with everything she has.

Because she is never sure if something is waiting for her, if someone won't come calling and dragging her back. She is never sure what waits for her and who what's to steal her away again. 

She is damn sure though, that if someone does come, she's not going without a fight. She will kick and scream and use every ounce of self knowledge she has to fight her way out.

Because no one gets to own her again. No one claims her unless he wants them to and there is no one she is willing to bow to anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

Lies come easily to her, like something she’s been born to do. They roll off her tongue with the greatest of ease and when she’s asked a question, her knee jerk reaction is to lie.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course.”

She doesn't say that she’s hardly aware of what’s going on outside of her own head right now. Nor doe sshe mention how, not fifteen minutes ago, she thought she had been about to shoot a man simply because she’d been ordered to.

There’s no need to say any of that, no one needs to know.

Even though there’s blood under her fingernails and she doesn't know why AND can’t put the pieces together enough to have even a slight idea.

“Hey, you still with me?”

There’s a hand on her skin to accompany the words and she’s blinking, biting down on her lip to keep from jumping back. 

“Yeah, I’m still here.” 

She wonders how often she blinks out of awareness, if this is a thing she should look into, if she needs to worry about it.

“Okay, just making sure.”

The knowledge that she’s lying is tick in the air but she doesn't have the ability to try and fix any of it.

Instead they both leave the bathroom, her hands still damp and the scent of blood and soap still lingering near.


	6. Chapter 6

It's not hard to lose herself on nights like this. It's quiet, peaceful and she can hear the hum of traffic. Her breathing is slow, almost at sleeping pasterns but not quite. She's not asleep but rather, at rest.

And her mind starts tripping backward, stumbling to dark places she doesn't want to go to. It's not every time, not even most times, but when she's alone and letting her mind drift, it sometimes falls back into the darkness of that place.

She pulls at the strings of her thoughts, trying to lure it away but the memories are heavy against her head and she feels herself falling into old thoughts, old faces of those who she knows aren't with her anymore.

Her breathing doesn't quicken, her heart rate doesn't rise. She blinks in the darkness a few times though, as if she's trying to clear the visions from behind her eyes, but nothing works.

Instead she's left with flashes, glimpses of all the things she's done, the people she's hurt, the people she lost. It threatens to pull her down deeper, to the point where they stop being memories and start being flashbacks, dangerous and sharper than what memories are.

Her body isn't responding to her commands anymore, she can't bring herself to sit up or to keep blinking. Her breath is speeding up and her hands are clenching the sheets. She's trying to pull herself out of it and she feels like instead, she's falling deeper.

There's a noise at her doorway and she registers it but doesn't react. It's not quite enough to jar her out of her thoughts entirely but it pulls her consciousness forward just a little bit.

"Nat?"

Clint. Of course it's him. He's been staying with her since she decided to go on her little road trip of self discovery, claiming he wants to get out of dodge but they both knew he had other motives.

He comes to her side, she can hear his feet on the hardwood even if she doesn't see him, and settles at the edge of her bed. 

"Hey," he greets softly, one hand moving to touch her fist. "You okay?"

She doesn't say anything but she can feel her body coming back, can feel her pulse and the way her breath slows a little. 

She rolls onto her side, her body curling against his waist. "I'm okay," she says, her voice careful not to be too loud.

"You mind company?" 

Instead of a verbal response, she moves, leaving room for him to settle next to her, which he promptly does.

His hands find her a moment after, touching her carefully, fingers gentle as they move along the lines of her body. He's bringing her back the rest of the way, pulling her out of her own thoughts and into the present. 

She rolls onto her side, her back facing him and he moves his hands to run down her spine, then start massaging at the lower part of her back. He does this whether she's upset or not, mostly after missions but there are no missions anymore.

Not that it stops him or anything.

He presses a light kiss to the base of her neck and keeps going until they both know the last of the tension has faded. Even after that, he goes on for a few moments, fingers touching her carefully and running up and down her skin.

Her eyes are closed and her breathing is steady. It's not dangerous though, she's not going to fall into her thoughts again. 

They rest together like that, him lightly curling around her like she had done to him earlier, his hand on her side. Her arm moves that she an rest her hand over his and she lays like that, silent and comfortable until sleep, not memories, overtakes her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for the be_compromised prmptathon.

She’s perfume or poison, you can't be sure. She’s daggers on her fingertips, and she’s danger in the sway of her hips. She's the promise of death and the reassurance that you're going to have a hell of a time before you get there.

She is a storm trapped in the body of a woman and she's going to leave nothing in her wake.

She's black eyes and she's blood red lipstick or maybe just blood itself. She's black cats crossing your path and the knowledge that you're doomed after seeing her.

She is fierce, she is anger, she is cunning.

And if she wanted to, she could bring the world to it's knees but she's got better things to do. 

And if this is how you see her, if this is all you know, then you should be aware that she's winning the game you two are playing. 

Because she's also smoke and mirrors and and the gun brought to a knife fight. She's the card up someone's sleeve and she's winning each game she plays.

When you don't see her as a person, when you think of her as the Black Widow and nothing more, she knows exactly how to win the game, how tot walk away with the pot and leave you behind, dead on the floor and bleeding on the carpet.

She is danger, she is disaster, she is deception and as long as you keep thinking that's all she is, she'll be sure to forever win the games she plays.


	8. Chapter 8

Sometimes she fixates on words, on ideas or concepts or definitions. She thinks about them, considers and debates them in her mind. She analyzes their meaning, weighs their merits and tries to decide if they really do deserve their own word, their own place in whatever language she's considering at the time.

Her mind keeps circling around the word 'haunted', thoughts drifting to and fro but always returning to that particular word tonight.

_Haunted: 1. inhabited or frequented by ghosts 2. preoccupied, as with an emotion, memory, or idea; obsessed_

The definitions wrap around her head, teasing her mind with other concepts surrounding them, memory and identity and obsession all coming to the forefront of her thoughts at one point or another.

Yet she keeps coming back to being haunted, to being stalked by her own thoughts, by her own ghosts that rise up in her mind and tug her deep into the own dark halls of her head.

She has a lot to be haunted by, memories upon memories of things that could wrap around her and pull her under the water of her thoughts. She keeps swimming though, staying at the surface and letting her mind never fall to deep.

It's safer that way, easier to pull herself out again when the thoughts are getting too weighted. She can pull away, try and not let obsession take over and instead float above it all and cast her thoughts aside.

But she knows she _is_ haunted, that's undeniable. She knows that ghosts live in her head as much as they do everyone else she knows at this point.

All of them are haunted houses, filled with ghosts and memories and terrors that promise to emerge of investigated by the right person. And if that right person happens to be each other, then all the better. They've all seen what hauntings can do, the havoc that ghosts can cause. They are all prepared.

And even though she's not sure she wants anyone in her house, in her head and in her memories, she knows she can take it. Knows she's ready for it, despite trepidation, despite fear.

That's all a part of the haunting, isn't it? The fear of the house itself, of what's to be discovered within. Yet she will open up, carefully allow people to enter and see what they will see. She is dusty, covered in cobwebs and broken glass but there are candles to light the way and a space or two where the ghosts have already been chased out.

And maybe there will be more after a while, maybe the people she trusts will bring life to her house just as she might bring life to theirs. Maybe they will not all be haunted but filled with life, with the thriving memories of better times, rather than the darkness of the past that slowly erodes all of them.

Maybe one day, there will be families living within their houses. Maybe there will be light.


	9. Chapter 9

She rises from the water light a ghost, like a nymph, like a creature that was never meant to be on land. Her limbs are long and pale as paper and her hair hangs limp around her, long, red tendrils that get lost in the darkness of the water around her.

The lake isn't hers, it's not the river she was found in, not the river that she was pulled from but he knows it feels good all the same. She lets herself sink back into the water, her eyes closed and she looks at peace. As if she belongs, as if she had always belonged and had always been in that lake, it's guardian from the beginning of time until that very moment.

He knows different, though, knows the truth about her. Her lake is far, far away from here and holds no peace for her

"You're staring," she tells him and he blinks, grinning a little. 

"You're worth staring at."

She laughs and it's waves crashing on the shore. It shouldn't be, it makes no sense in his head, but it's true all the same. SHe's remarkable like that, though, an impossible thing in the form of a woman.

A smile settles on her lips and she steps out of the water, a few fluid movements and he's right up against him, her body drenched and naked. She hums for a moment, then leans up and kisses him on the mouth, lightly at first, then harder. She tastes faintly of the water but it doesn't make a difference to him. She's always tasted like that, of wet and fish, and weeds. 

She pulls back then, watches him by the light of the moon. "How much time?" 

He blinks, looking at her in puzzlement for a moment. Then she reaches for his wrist, eying the time on his watch and shrugs. "I should get dressed."

He makes a soft noise in the back of his throat as his hands settle against her waist, keeping her there, though his grasp is loose. "Or you could stay here for a minute?" His voice is hopeful.

"I could do that." She laughs again and his heart swells.

Another kiss and her arms wrap around his neck, pulling him down and keeping him there as a minute turns into four.

"Nat," he breathes when they break apart. He had no plans to go anywhere with that statement, just wanted to feel her name on his lips since her lips weren't there anymore.

"I"m getting dressed now," she tells him, pulling away. "And then we're going to go back, get this fucking mission done and then go away for longer than a few hours."

He nods, swallowing. "Yeah, yeah we're gonna do that."

She picks up her clothes and starts putting them on, letting her body soak in the water until she was dry before putting them on. She looks just like everyone else, hair pulled back into a loose ponytail and skin no longer ghost white but the color fo living flesh. Her eyes don't glitter the way they had a moment ago and he knows she's put on her face again, put on that disguise that keeps most of the world from knowing what she truly is.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me elsewhere:  
> [My DW](http://rootsofthestories.dreamwidth.org) (which I use regularly)  
> [My Tumblr](http://analtarofstars.tumblr.com/) (which I am very rarely on)  
> [My Twitter](http://twitter.com/harvestgraces) (which I am on at random)


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